media

John Wilbanks, the founder of Science Commons, is in the midst of a big move. His division of Creative Commons, focused on opening scientific research and innovation, is now five years old and is being “airlifted” to California to try to bring some of their ideas into the Creative Commons movement as a whole.

• Raph's Website " Are virtual worlds over?
  Fascinating article from a 3d virtual worlds pioneer arguing that much lighter-weight games have stolen some of the momentum for virtual worlds by appearing to be standalone places with an ongoing existence… even when they're not. A very interesting analysis of the ways psuedonymity, tie formation and the notion of independently existing place differ between Facebook games and virtual worlds… ending with a conclusion that momentum has shifted towards these simpler spaces.

• Foursquare in SF: The Quest for Mayorship | 7×7
  nice riff on the competitive dynamics behind foursquare, and the ways in which the game mechanics – tacked on to a social search tool – ate the main product
  (tags: foursquare GPS location geolocation mobile sanfrancisco

ChatRoulette: An Initial Survey
The fine folks at the Web Ecology Project pride themselves on researching web trends that are just starting to catch the attention of the media and other researchers. As such, we can count on them not only to offer insights into online, randomized chat site ChatRoulette, but into derivative works like CatRoulette. (Yes, I have considered surfing the site with Drew in front of the camera. Rachel told me not to.)